What are the Latest Trends in Smart Packaging?

Package foods have soared in popularity since they were first introduced. They are convenient, easy to story and safe from external contaminants. They also are easy to carry, reclose and store.

The market is broken down into 16 categories: ready meals, baked foods, breakfast cereals, soup, baby food, potato chips, nuts, instant noodles, pasta, biscuits, chocolate confectionary, cheese, yogurt, ice creams, sauces, dressings and condiments, and non-alcoholic drinks. The largest category is baby food, and the United States is the largest market for packaged foods.

Allied Market Research’s report World Packaged Food explores each food category as well as trends in the industry, the key players in the field and a market analysis by region. Euromonitor International’s report GlobalFood Packaging, meanwhile, explains the key factors influencing the market, market share and brand distribution.

Smart packaging takes packaging to a new level. Technology is used to provide product information and ensure quality assurance. Smart packaging, however, is not yet mainstream. Customers are skeptical these products can live up to their claims. In addition, production costs prohibit large scale manufacturing. MarketLine’s report Can It Really Revolutionize the Consumer Packaged Goods Industry? examines the pros and cons of smart packaging.

Despite its challenges, companies are pushing for the development and adoption of smart packaging.

In Germany, the Minister of Food and Agriculture, Christian Schmidt, views smart packaging as a way to eliminate the hundreds of dollars of food each household throws away annually. Produce followed by pasta and bread are the foods most likely to be thrown away by German households, according to Euro Activ.

Schmidt has set the goal of eliminating half of all food waste by 2030. He believes smart packaging might be the solution to the problem, and that expiration dates are inaccurate. Over the course of the next three years, $14 million will be invested in new technologies including computer chips in packaging that will give consumers a better idea of how well a product is aging.

It is illegal in Italy and France for supermarkets to throw away food. Instead, it must be given to charity, sold at a reduced price, composted or made into animal feed. Germany, the Netherlands and Austria hope to soon follow suit.

Meanwhile, Unilever has partnered with the UK’s The Centre for Process Innovation to develop smart packaging at an inexpensive price.

“Going forward the next steps are to upscale the manufacturing process to ensure that these novel NFC applications are produced at the cost and speeds that industry demands. To do this, we are currently developing the capability to scale up these production processes to produce market trial samples of up to 50,000-100,000 tags,” program manager Mike Clausen told Global Cosmetics News.

We hope this information has been helpful to you. There is more useful information about the food market trends in ReportLinker’s portal. If you have any additional questions or needs, please feel free to contact us.